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Okay Lisa, this one’s for you . . . if you’re still looking for ammo for your argument that Disney Vacation Club is a cult, you need to check out DIS News on why DVC can’t be sold in Hawaii (yet), reposted from the Star-Bulletin (Honolulu, I believe):

Disney, which paid $144 million for a 21-acre tract of oceanfront property for the project, said that it chose Hawaii as its first stand-alone hotel destination because Disney Vacation Club members showed strong demand for the islands.

But Disney will need to register with the state to sell memberships in that project, which is expected to break ground next year and is slated for a 2011 opening.

Hawaii, a top time-share destination along with California and Florida, enacted stringent restrictions on product marketing in the early 1980s that required companies to register and pay fees before doing business in the state. Inexplicably, Disney never did so.

Lori Beth Van Cantfort, the time-share administrator for the state of Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, said yesterday that although Disney has been registered in Hawaii since 1993 and can advertise its time-share plan here, it does not have a Hawaii escrow agreement on file with the department and therefore cannot conduct any sales activity in the state.

Apparently, in the current state of things, a Hawaii resident who wants to buy DVC will have to fly to the contiguous 48 US states to even get detailed information from Disney, let alone sign any paperwork. (Or perhaps they can get around this if they buy DVC points through resale? I’ll bet somebody reading this blog will know.) One Hawaii resident comments:

“I didn’t know that I had the option to go speak to them while in California, or I might have tried,” she said. “Most of my inquiries were for the info DVD or through e-mail. It was never mentioned to stop in and speak to them while on a trip there.”

Wow. Perhaps there’s a black market in Hawaii for some of those DVC DVDs that so many of us have sitting around our homes. Who knew?

7 Responses to “Why Wouldn’t Disney Sell DVC in Hawaii?”

I don’t think this is going to hurt Disney too much. Locals are not always the best customers. I suspect that the DVC resorts in California and Florida are mostly servicing non-locals right now anyway.

I don’t think the issue here is whether DVC/Hawaii points will be bought by Hawaii residents. The question is, why wouldn’t they file the appropriate paperwork to register with the state, to be able to sell Orlando DVC points to Hawaii residents?

I’ve got to wonder if they were unwilling to comply with the state’s timeshare-sales marketing requirements, which are considered far stricter than those of other states.

When I originally bought into the DVC I got the impression from my guide that there were states where the people had to purchase the unit while at Disney because they couldn’t once they got home.

This came up when we were discussing the timeline I had to make a decision. He asked what state I was from and then said that it makes a difference because not all states allow for the purchase of points from within their borders.

I wonder if there are other US states where the residents can’t request/receive information about DVC unless they’re on site. The article implied that Hawaii residents weren’t able to order informational materials, which I found surprising given how heavily Disney plugs its DVC infomercial DVD.

I know you posted this a while ago, but I just stumbled on this page today.

There are several states where they have to be pre-registered. I don’t know all of them, but if you know a zip code from every state, you could use it to try and request info. If the state isn’t registered yet, you wont be able to get the info. Of course, if you are doing that, you have way too much time on your hands.

In California, they had to register each resort before they could sell it from California. Or at least that was what I was told. Since I already owned points, I could then buy into the new resorts in FL. But my neighbors only had the option of SS when the new Animal Kingdom went on sale. They were a little bummed, but bought anyway.